Every once in a while, I read something that makes me think, “I knew that, but I really need to remember it!” Here’s one of those cases from Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ classic commentary on Ephesians 6.* You’d think I’d always think this way because spiritual warfare is my primary area of study, but I sure needed this reminder. Maybe you do, too, as you prepare for teaching the Word in whatever role you teach this week. Lloyd-Jones directed his words to pastors, but they apply to all of us who teach God’s Word:
To be very practical, I am prepared to assert that the moment you begin to find yourself regarding Christian truth as merely a subject for study, you have already succumbed to the devil. . . .
I would say once more what I am profoundly convinced is a terrifying truth, confirmed by my experience more and more, that to be a preacher, an expositor of God’s Book, is one of the most dangerous things in the world. . . . The danger confronting the pastor-preacher is the danger of a professionalism which leads to a theoretical, academic approach. . . .
We are really dealing with the danger of ceasing to come under the power of the truth. The moment you cease to be under its power, you have already become a victim of the devil. I must apply that to myself as a preacher. If I can study the Bible without being searched and examined and humbled, without being lifted up and made to praise God, and to feel as much of the desire to sing when I am alone in my study as when I am standing in the pulpit, I am in a bad state. This is the truth of God, it is the power of God, and we should always feel something of that power.
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*Martyn Lloyd-Jones, The Christian Warfare: An Exposition of Ephesians 6:10-13 (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1976), 179-80.
